


Solace

by Antigone_Sycamore



Series: Solace [1]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Hardy's POV, Hurt, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Missing Scene, Season 2, he's so dramatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-10-14 21:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20607314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antigone_Sycamore/pseuds/Antigone_Sycamore
Summary: Hardy reaches for her time and time again.A couple of missing moments from season 2.





	1. Chapter 1

***

He usually makes a point of not getting involved in other people’s life’s. Apart from work related reason, obviously. This job. What he does. It can only be done when he at least tries to remain somewhat objective. When he doesn’t get involved.

It didn’t work for Sandbrook. It worked even less for Broadchurch.

Despite it all, his unexpected concern for Ellie Miller is a surprise even to himself.

It’s not that she seeks him out. Not per se anyway. There is a moment when she comes to his hotel room at the Traders in the middle of the night. She’s a mess and he can’t blame her. Seeking answers he wishes he could give her. Make it all a little less unbearable. But he can’t and it breaks his already shattered heart.

„I want to kill him,“ she tells him. Face stern and fists clenched and he doesn’t think she could.

***

It irks him. This unperturbed (and quite frankly, somewhat inappropriate) impulse to make her feel better. To make her eat and sleep and hug and work. Because really, what can he possibly do to make this whole goddamn situation easier for her? So he actually tries to be less of a dick. To his immense relief Miller shuts down nearly each and every one of his clumsy efforts to comfort her and buries herself in work instead. And he gets it.

Though, she becomes a steady presence by his side and if this is what she needs he’ll try to do this for her. To see this through with her. All of it.

***  
„What’s this?“ she asks and skeptically eyes the tinfoil-wrapped package and the cup he’s just handed her.

„Kebab,“ he deadpans. 

She frowns at him from the driver’s seat and he thinks that she spends too much time with him. 

***  
Halfway through the whole goddamn bloody thing, he isn’t sure anymore who’s dragging along who.

Ellie Miller, it turns out, is as resourceful and as resilient as they get. She keeps pushing despite the tears while he can barely even catch a breath anymore.

***  
She actually relents after a while with respect to beverages and wordlessly accepts the steaming mug he hands her at the end of the day without glaring at him. 

***

He is rummaging through the cupboards in his tiny kitchen, looking for more teabags, when wee Fred starts crying in the other room. 

He brushes past her in the sitting room with three long strides, waving a dismissive hand at her as Miller scrambles to her feet. 

“I got it,” he tells her brusquely because he supposes this is the least he can do for her now. 

They have breakfast on his sofa and afterwards Fred hauls himself across his thighs and effectively into his lap without warning or precedent but with all the uninhibited bubbly enthusiasm of a two year old. 

The boy touches his face and tousles his hair. Fingers sticky with marmalade Hardy didn’t even know he had and he feels himself go still at the child’s wholesome touch. The way only someone who’s yet to be betrayed can reach out. 

Fred’s tiny hands brush along his beard and Hardy feels a sharp sting of pain at the unimaginable dread and despair the adults around him have managed to create. It is only a small mercy that Fred is too small to understand what is going on. And yet he’ll grow up forever marked as the son of a murderer and, arguably even worse, - a pedophile. 

Fred squeaks, cheerful spirit unperturbed, as he tugs at Hardy’s beard to draw his attention. 

Hardy catches the boys tiny hands in his own to stop him from pulling too hard but finds himself looking at Miller instead. 

He isn’t sure what it is that he’s asking her exactly. 

But he wouldn’t blame her if she’d be weary of the boy getting attached to him in any way. Not after all of this. Not when he’s the one who’s told her not to trust time and time again.

But Miller just looks at the two of them, not a trace of distrust or wariness on her face, but with eyes shining in the fair morning light and the promise of a slight smile tugging at the corner of her lips and he thinks that there is something wholesome about her too. 

He mistook it for inexperience in the beginning - maybe even naivete, but despite everything, Ellie Miller actually _chooses_ to trust people instead of being wary of their many faults. 

Hardy returns his attention to the boy, catches him in his arms and whirls him of off his feet and around on impulse. He’s done this before, of course, in another life time but his muscles remember the movements. The clear high pitched sound of utter delight that rings through the room is one the sad blue little house probably hasn’t heard in decades. 

***

Hardy finds himself reaching out to her. For his own sake or for her own, he isn’t sure anymore

He wants to ignore the way his heart stutters in his chest as she shrugs him off. He gets it, though. The unwillingness to accept comfort. The tight knot of guilt that results from having failed to protect those you love the most. The instinct not to get too close.  


***

He makes a point of not touching her again after she’s shrugged him off on his veranda. He wants to – as much as for her sake as for his own but he won’t; never would. 

Instead, he puts a steaming mug of strong fresh earl grey in front of her and a photo of Pippa Gillespie. He taps the picture – twice – with his index finger, indicating the place where the pendant sits around the girl’s neck. It’s a little silver heart - because _of course_ it is. The greatest tragedy of his own life lost to a stupid careless mistake while his own broken heart hammers uselessly against his ribcage.

She’s been on his sofa for the last half hour or so, eyes shining with fresh tears threatening to spill over at any moment, clutching wee Fred tightly to her chest. The boy has fallen asleep, his head lulling on his mother’s shoulder. 

It’s the worst kind of distraction there can possibly be – another dead girl. Another family ripped apart – but at this point it is all he has to offer. 

He moves to slowly peel sleeping Fred from her arms and she doesn’t resist much apart from a muffled sob.

“That’s it – it’s alright,” he murmurs as he takes the sleeping child from her and carries the boy to his bed. Fred doesn’t even stir.

When he comes back into his sitting room, she’s brushed the tears from her eyes, however defiantly they keep coming. Her own index finger traces over the little heart shaped pendant. 

***

He feels her hand come to rest against his back. It presses against his spine, firm and solid, and he tries to focus on that instead of the tight constricting feeling in his chest. 

“Hardy-,” her voice sounds alarmed, yet distant. 

He thinks that he should be used to this by now – the way he feels his heart hammer against his rips – too fast and not fast enough at the same time. The way his vision blurs around the edges as his grip on the world around him slips. It is terrifying every single time. 

He feels her hand clench around his biceps as they both stumble to the ground, his weight too heavy for her to support on her own. She had pulled over on a country road, just a few kilometers out of Sandbrook, when she had sensed his discomfort. Hardy had leaped for the door as soon as the car came to a stop. 

She tries to shake him. He can’t quite make out her words anymore but the panic that raises in her voice still resonates clearly in his clouded mind. 

He blindly reaches for her, tries to squeeze her arm to let her know he’ll be fine while he fumbles for the Atenolol in the breast pocket of this jacket. 

***


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have soooo much fun writing these two. And I appreciate all the comments. This fandom is SOOOO awesome! Also, English isn't my first language - if you spot any errors in grammar and in punctuation and they bother you, feel free to point them all out to me - I appreciate it!

***

He’s learnt early on that recovery is about reestablishing routine. About reclaiming the spaces that had been marked by death and despair. Something as simple as going to the beach. Or repainting a room. Or attending your eldest’s football game on a sunny autumn Saturday afternoon. 

He isn’t exactly sure how he’d gotten dragged into this or since when he can’t say no to her anymore. It’s not exactly that she’d asked him to come anyway. He’d been around, there was a vague mentioning of a football game later in the day and they sort of just got into the car at some point. Somehow he doesn’t doubt that she needs him to be there. Focusing on the mundane things that make up small town everyday life, instead of on the horrendous cracks and splinters that pull it apart. 

They stand side by side on the field, wee Fred tumbling between the two of them on the ground and Olly, who’d brought Tom, to her left, keeps shifting his weight from one foot to the other and shoots them anxious glances. Hardy has lost his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves in an ill founded attempt to blend in. He doubts it makes much of a difference. He’s the DI who’s very recently been accused of having an affair with the subordinate whose husband he apprehended for murder and the only bloody person who’s wearing a suit to a children’s football game on a Saturday afternoon. It doesn’t get any worse than this and there’s no chance not everyone at the bloody football field knows who they are – rolled up sleeves or not. Maybe he should get a t-shirt after all. 

He risks a glance at Miller, who keeps her eyes firmly trained on the running boys on the field. She’s hanging by a thread. He can tell. It doesn’t need a detective to see through her paper thin composure. She tries to keep it together but her eyes are shining with unshed tears every time she reaches for her eldest soon. The fragile truce mother and son have forged in constant peril with every erratic movement she makes. 

When they first arrived, Tom eyed Hardy with an unconcealed mix of skepticism and suspicion that made his mother’s frown skitter over his boyish features – if only for a second. Hardy held his gaze because he thinks it’s the honest thing to do. He wonders now, if it troubles Miller that the boy looks so clearly like his father.

***

“I had a one-night stand the other night,” Miller announces out of nowhere, voice only slightly off. 

Hardy opens his eyes and turns his head to look at her. They haven’t spoken a word in at least an hour or so and he was about to drift off into the kind of uneasy sleep that feels more like unconsciousness than anything else. 

Miller is gripping the steering wheel with both of her hands, knuckles white against the darkness and eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead of them. 

He tries to think of an appropriate response, but _nothing_ at all comes to mind. 

She shoots him a brief glance, presumably to verify that he is in fact awake and has heard her, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. For a few seconds the silence that fills the confined space of their car is deafening. 

“With Claire-,” she continues when Hardy doesn’t respond, “-I mean, – not _with_ Claire, but, you know-,” she trails off again.

Hardy isn’t sure if she expects him, or even _wants_ him to contribute anything to that. Sometimes just vocalizing something is all it takes and he certainly recognizes a confession when he hears one. But while he tries to keep the picture of her with a random stranger at bay that instantly flashes across his mind - _Ellie Miller slightly drunk and numb and all the more vulnerable desperately trying to block out the noise around her if only for just a moment-_, he still thinks that she needs some sort of absolution from him.

“Claire’s a mess,” he finally says on the far end of a sigh, because it’s true and his anger towards the other women has just increased tenfold. He should have seen this coming-

Miller shoots him another sideway glance from the driver’s seat, eyes shining with unshed tears in the darkness now, but she still doesn’t really look at him.

Hardy squeezes his eyes shut and runs a hand over his tired face. He suddenly has no idea how to do this anymore. At this very moment, in the middle of the bloody night on a country road in the middle of nowhere, he would sell his own life if only it meant that she could have hers back. 

Of course, it doesn’t work like that and there is _nothing_ in the goddamn world he can do or say to make this any easier for her, so what he hears himself saying instead is,

“I had a one-night stand with Claire once,” – and because that, too, is true, “it didn’t help-“

Miller snorts in the driver’s seat beside him and he thinks that at least they are on familiar ground again.

“So, you think we should both blame Claire then-,” she says, some of her usual exasperation with him creeping back into her voice.

Hardy only nods, “we should both blame Claire then.”

Silence fills their car again, although nothing has been resolved. He can tell when she’s about to speak again, because her grip, once again, tightens around the steering wheel, knuckles white against the darkness. 

“It probably never does - help, I mean-“ She’s looking at him now, finally willing herself to meet his eyes. It’s not a question, really. It certainly isn’t a suggestion either. But the way Miller’s voice slightly breaks on the last word sets him completely on edge – and gives him pause at the same time.

Hardy redirects his eyes to the dark road ahead of them. His mind all too easily summons a picture of Ellie Miller panting beneath him - but no, it wouldn’t help either of them. Not like this. Not right now.

“No,” he say, “it never does,” and closes his eyes against the image. 

***


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many many many many many THANKS to the wonderful TreacleA!!!! Without her this thing would be littered with really embarrassing typos! Thank you!!!

***

It is late when he returns to the little blue house by the river, the sun already an orange disc low in the sky. He stops by one of the food stands at the fair behind his house and buys some popcorn and candy floss. It’s an unfamiliar impulse he doesn’t quite manage to quench, so he just goes along with it.

When he pushes open the door to the small sitting room, Miller is curled up on his sofa, her orange parka covering her like a blanket, files and pictures scattered on the floor below her and fast asleep. 

He puts the candy floss and the popcorn down at the coffee table beside her and collects some of the files and pictures from the floor. He doesn’t exactly try to keep it down, hoping she’d wake up from his moving around the room, but Miller doesn’t even stir. 

He thinks about waking her – thinks that he probably _should_ wake her – but the skin under her eyes appears hollow and paper thin these days and he just can’t bring himself to shake her awake from what little sleep she can get. Instead, he busies himself in the kitchen, makes tea for the both of them and eventually calls her sister to ask if she’d be willing to keep wee Fred for the night – it’s not even a first.

Lucy is all cheeky innuendos and purring assumptions. Hardy ignores her. After the bloody barristers publicly accused them of having an affair during the investigation that led to Joe’s arrest the whole bloody town just seems to subscribe to that version of events. Like he wasn’t wandering around angry and pale, only just a few feet away from the precipice himself. But screw them anyway. 

Miller shifts on his sofa when he quietly puts a cup of freshly stewed tea on the small coffee table beside her head, pulling the parka up further to her chin against the chilly draught leaking through the old window above the sofa. Hardy regards her for a moment, still questioning the wisdom of not waking her, before he sighs, tiredly running a hand through his already disheveled hair and retrieves the extra blanket from his bedroom. They aren’t colleagues anymore, not mates exactly either and certainly not lovers. She irritates him, mostly, one way or another – even in her emotionally compromised state, most of the time closer to tears than not – he feels the unexpected need to protect her; to keep her close. 

There isn’t anything he can do about the emotional fallout of Joe’s arrest, or the goddamn bloody trial and him guilting her into getting involved into Sandbrook doesn’t change any of that. And yet, he can’t help but feel relieved when she doesn’t pull away, when she stays with him – annoyed and short-tempered and irritated herself – and yet somehow an unfaltering bright presence by his side.

He spreads the blanket above her, over her and the orange parka and tucks it in around her shoulders with deft fingers, mindful not to touch her. She’ll probably have a hell of a sore back in the morning from sleeping on his narrow and worn out sofa and she’ll definitely be pissed at him for not waking her. He takes one last quick glance at her sleeping form, then retreats to his own bedroom.

***

He’s pulled from a dreamless sleep, sometime later, when he hears her shuffle around in the other room, her uncoordinated movements loud against the dark and quiet backdrop of the little blue house.

She knocks something over, then swears quietly under her breath.

“Miller,” he calls from his bedroom without getting up, voice rough from sleep, “go back to sleep.”

She briefly appears in his doorframe, “sorry-,” she mumbles sheepishly, “didn’t mean to wake you.”

Hardy sighs, running both of his hands down his tired face before he gets up. When he pads into his sitting room and brushes past her to the kitchen, Miller is about to pull on her parka. “You don’t have to leave,” he mutters groggily, irritated at himself for giving in to the inappropriate desire to make her stay.

“I told Lucy I’d pick up Fred by eight,” she says from the sitting room.

“It’s the middle of the bloody night, Miller. Besides, I called her earlier and led her know you’ll pick him up in the mornin’.”

He gets two glasses from the cupboard and fills them both with water from the tap. When he pads back into the sitting room, she’s standing in the middle of the dark room in her boots, laces still untied, and her parka, hands on her hips and glaring at him. It is dark, the only light filtering through the blinds from the lights outside by the river bank, but he can still see the small crease that forms between her eyebrows. 

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

He feels the sudden urge to smother her with one of the pillows. Even in the middle of the bloody night, she’s as exasperating as ever.

“You need to sleep,” he says, voice much softer than he intended, and puts one of the glasses down on the table; next to the popcorn and the candy floss and the untouched cup of tea from earlier.

Miller warily eyes the assortment of beverages and candy on the coffee table next to the sofa and then shoots him another tight look in the dark. She makes a frustrated sound at the back of her throat, before she relents and drops down back on the sofa with a sigh, reaching for the popcorn.

She pops some of it in her mouth. Hardy turns on the small lamp next to the sofa and sinks into the chair across from her. Miller shoves the popcorn his way but he shakes his head. They are silent for a couple of moments, the only sound in the room her chewing on the popcorn. 

“Thank you,” she says after a beat and he looks at her, fingers tightening around the glass in his hand, “for putting up with me. I know I must be bloody terrible company at the moment.”

She pops a few more popcorns in her mouth, chews on them warily, looking lost and out of place on his small sofa in her orange parka and her untied boots and he feels a surge of something akin to affection cursing through his heart. It’s easier now, with the pacemaker, not being thrown off all the time.

“You’re not so bad,” he tells her, looking at his bare feet. He’s just all too familiar with feeling lonely, even if being cheated on does not compare to having everything you though you know about the person you love blown to pieces in the blink of an eye. They fall silent again for a while, both of them lost in their own thoughts.

“I should get back to my place,” she says eventually, “your sofa is giving me back pain,” but makes no motion to actually move or stand up.

He waits a couple of moments for her to come to a decision. When she still doesn’t move he says, “you can have the bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

Miller shoots him another look, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not sleeping in your bed, Hardy.” 

“I’ve already slept on that sofa a dozen times. I don’t mind.”

Miller frowns at him, then she pulls her boots off again and then her parka. Without another word she settles back down against the cushion and pulls the blanket up to her chin again. Hardy sighs as he gets up from the chair to switch the light off. 

“Night, Miller,” he says as he pads back through the darkness to his bedroom.

“Night, Hardy,” she says, a slight edge to her voice in the darkness. 

When he wakes up the next morning, the blanket is neatly folded on the sofa. Miller is already gone and so are the rest of the popcorn and the candy floss.

***


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is still just a series of unrelated one-shots in _somewhat_ coherent English (or at least I hope so). I have so much fun writing these two ;-) I still can't get over how much Hardy --_cares_ in season 2 - about pretty much anything. How palpable his pain is.
> 
> Any and all improvements in my grammar and spelling are owed to TreacleA, who's repeatedly volunteered to help me out with these. Thank you! If you still haven't read it, go check out 'Loneliness (in F Flat Minor)'. Like right NOW!

***

"Miller."

He catches up with her in the car park, and when she sees him she looks even more miserable and upset than in the witness box half an hour earlier. She glares at him with glassy eyes, clutching her handbag to herself, and brushes past him towards her car without slowing down.

He falls into step a few feet behind. 

"Miller, just- wait."

"Leave me alone."

"Miller-"

"Do you really think it's the best idea to follow me right now?" she hisses through gritted teeth, still not looking at him. His hand reaches out for her on impulse, trying to slow her down, but he doesn't touch. 

"Miller-, please." He's pleading with her. Again.

In one fluid motion, she whirls around, face red with anger, fresh tears burning at the corners of her eyes. Failing to anticipate her sudden motion, Hardy almost runs into her.

"What do you want from me, Hardy?" and this time she actually does shout, drawing glances at them from around the car park. Reeling herself back in, Miller immediately looks sorry.

Albeit it being a rhetorical one, the question throws him off momentarily. More so than he anticipated. His eyes dart around the car park. What is it that he wants from her? Why does he fell the strange need to argue with her over this in a crown court car park in broad daylight?

"It's not your fault. None of this is your fault."

"Do you realize how this looks?"

Hardy makes a face. 

"We've already lost the confession because of me and now it looks like you and I conspired to put my husband behind bars, so we could have a passionate love affair," she hisses between gritted teeth, voice torn somewhere between dripping sarcasm and genuine despair. 

"That's ridiculous," he says, squinting into the sunlight, because _it is_. People do stupid things all the time, but rarely as stupid as to falsely accuse someone of murder just to cover up an affair. Then again, his own bloody wife lost the key evidence in an ongoing investigation because she couldn't wait to shag her colleague on her way to the police station. Amongst other things, that must have been a new level of stupidity..

"Now half the bloody town is going to believe I knew about him and Danny and turned a blind eye and the other bloody half is going to think I accused my husband of murder after beating him up, so I could shag my boss." She wipes at her eyes in frustration with one hand. It really _is_ ridiculous. Even he could see that she had been happy with her husband. Not just pretending, like most people do, covering up the worst of it, but genuinely and devotedly happy. It’s what made everything that had followed all the more agonizing. And it’s only a small comfort that the bloody barristers would go so far as to suggest an affair between two leading officers, when both of them know that she wouldn’t even let him hug her in a public bathroom. 

Hardy pulls another face as he shoves his hands into his pockets, "People are stupid. Screw them."

She looks at him disbelievingly, teeth gritted against his sarcasm, hands clenched into fists, about ready to explode again. He searches for something to say, anything that doesn't make him sound like a cheap hallmark card disseminating platitudes; or like a complete fuckwit. 

"Ellie, this isn't on you."

"Really? Who is it on then? You? Who is going to take responsibility for this whole goddamn bloody mess?" Fresh tears make their way down her cheeks, unimpeded for now, glinting on her face in the too bright sunlight. When he doesn't immediately answer, Miller stubbornly wipes at them yet again with shaking fingers.

From the corner of his eyes, he can see the Latimer family make their way to their van, Beth shooting them anxious glances across the car park. Miller falls silent, struggling to regain some of her composure.

When she looks at him again through narrowed eyes, her jaw is locked firmly in place as her hand rummages around in her handbag for her car keys. Without another word she turns around and storms off towards her car. Hardy stays behind, trying very hard not to look like an idiot. 

***  
At times, it surprises him how easy it is. How effortlessly he manages to accommodate Miller and her little boy in his blue house by the river; in his life. Or whatever is left of it at this point. Even the child minder knows who he is now, and Hardy is keenly aware of what it all must look like from the outside.

As far as Hardy can tell, wee Fred is coping surprisingly well with this new life he has been thrown into after having been separated from his closest attachment figure, along with almost everything else he has known in his young life from one day to the next. Whenever Miller brings him along, the boy is a bubbly cheerful presence in his little blue house, demanding attention from the both of them - as any two-year old would - and in inopportune moments, smearing peanut butter onto his furniture and tearing at case files. His house isn't exactly baby proof, but Miller has had the foresight to clear out some of the bottom shelves so the both of them won't have to jump up every two seconds to stop wee Fred from stabbing himself with some of the old spear fishing gear that was used to decorate the house. 

Fred, following his mother's example, has taken to calling him Hardy, despite Miller's continuing but fruitless attempts at referring to him as 'Uncle Alec'. Hardy doesn't complain. But he can tell how much she struggles with being a single mother. How guilty she feels every time she leaves her boy with her sister or with the child minder. How guilty she feels whenever she brings wee Fred to his house, standing by warily as her young son becomes attached to another man whose continuing presence in his life is in constant peril. They haven't discussed whether he is going to stay on as DI in Broadchurch after they solve Sandbrook, after the trial, but Hardy feels her reproachful eyes on him now whenever he reaches for Fred. He adds it to the long list of things in his life to feel guilty about. 

Most days, wee Fred, having inherited his mother's gleeful spirit, is seemingly unperturbed by all the guilt eating away at the adults around him. Today clearly isn't one of those days. Since Miller arrived late in the afternoon to go through some of the witness statements from the Sandbrook files, Fred has been fussing and crying, working himself up into a proper tantrum. For the past 10 minutes or so, the boy's been screaming at the top of his lungs, the high-pitched sound ringing clearly through Hardy's little blue house by the river, and the one next to it, and probably the one next to that too. Miller has tried everything to make him stop crying, from trying to bribe him with food to letting him watch telly to putting him to sleep. But face red and wet with tears and snot, wee Fred is inconsolable today, with his mother seemingly at the end of her line.

"Fred, darlin," she tries to sooth, voice slightly on edge, stroking the boy's hair, "you have to calm down."

Hardy tries to stay out of her way for the most of it. Despite not being used to it, he isn't actually perturbed by the crying child, maybe only slightly irritated. The chaotic energy of it all leaves him feeling oddly nostalgic. It's a stark reminder of a time when he used to have a small child himself. And a wife. And a proper home. If anything, it irritates him because he's reminded of how far he's gone off the rails after everything that happened in Sandbrook.

When Miller emerges from his bedroom, crying Fred in tow, she looks pale and exhausted herself. Compared to what she's dealing with these days crying Fred seems like peanuts but the past months have certainly taken their toll on her patience. Hardy watches the both of them warily from behind his glasses. 

"It's no use," she mumbles, frustrated, and starts collecting her stuff from around his sitting room, while Hardy pretends not to notice the single tear that escapes from the corner of her eye and makes its way down her cheek before she can stubbornly wipe it away with the heel of her hand.

"It's alright, Miller, just let him be for a minute, will yer?" He doesn't want to impose but at the same time he also doesn't want her to feel like she's on her own. Like he only makes her stay to figure out Sandbrook or to keep Claire in line when he is the one who put her in that miserable position in the first place - in more ways than one. He wants to help.

Miller ignores him as she keeps stuffing toys into her diaper bag. She's made it clear on several occasions now that she doesn't need his help, or his sympathy for that matter. Fred throws himself against her leg as Miller crashes through his sitting room. He's moved from incessant high-pitched cries to no less irritable exhausted whining. At least this whole thing is wearing him down as much as the two of them. Miller picks him up with a frustrated grunt, shouldering her bag on the other side.

Hardy drums the fingers of his right hand against the armrest of his chair in indecision before he pushes himself up, "Awright, Miller, that's it-," her eyes snap to his in exasperated confusion, "just--give him to me." He reaches out both of his arms, and motions for her to hand her the crying child. Miller glares at him for a second or two, lips pressed into a firm line, but hands the boy over without much hesitation. 

Fortunately, wee Fred is too far gone to make too much of a fuss about it. He struggles a bit in Hardy's arms as his grip tightens around his tiny body. Hardy grabs his coat, awkwardly struggles into it without putting the fussing boy down before he reaches for Fred's parka. 

Miller stands in his sitting room, hands to her hips and the diaper bag still hanging off her left shoulder, "What are you gonna do?"

"We're goin' for a walk," he says, clumsily wrapping the parka around still whining and fussing Fred, "it'll calm him down. You stay here. Make tea, watch some telly or somethin'." He doesn't meet her eyes, thinks he doesn't want to see her refuse him again as he feels his heart clenches painfully in his chest. He's almost forgotten what it feels like. Holding a human being so small. 

Miller doesn't object, she doesn't even move as he makes his way past her to the door, wee Fred crying on his shoulder now. Hardy pushes the door open with his foot, but turns his head back at her again, "don't worry, we won't be far," he says and this time, he does meet her eyes, holds them, waiting. She's still standing in the same position as before, hands to her hips, lips pressed into a firm line. She stares at the both of them for a few seconds, face unreadable, before, finally, she gives a small nod. Hardy's arms tighten around wee Fred as he turns again and pushes through the door.

***


End file.
